RedHanded - Episode 240 - Kim Jong Nam: Prank Show Assassination

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

On the 13th of February 2017, two young women - believing that they were taking part in a bizarre Japanese game show -  smeared baby oil across the face of a stranger at Kuala Lumpur Airport in Malaysia.   The truth, however, was that there was no Japanese game show; the baby oil wasn't baby oil; and these two women had just unknowingly assassinated the estranged half-brother of North Korea's one and only, Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Sruti. And welcome to Red Handed and we need your help. We're asking for things straight away. We lured you in. Yeah, we got you. We got you with that great title of a great case we're about to deliver. But before we get to that, friends, you will also get to benefit from this thing we're going to ask you for. Because basically, we are going to do a very special Red Haunted. We haven't done one in a while, and we're going to do a very very special one coming up very soon and for that we need your scariest scariest stories they don't even need to be yours maybe you know a friend who knows a friend who knows a friend who got haunted because

they touched a creepy doll i don't know find the story please send it to us but crucially we need audio or video even better that accompanies these cases and that doesn't mean you're sending us a voice note of the story it doesn't mean you're sending us a picture of your face which like we love you you're very beautiful but that's not what we need we basically need ghost evidence in audio and or video form, maybe even a photograph, something like that. So if you have that, please send it in to us and we will craft something beautiful out of it for us all to love together. Absolutely. Get our content teeth in too. So send it, please, to redhandedpatreon at gmail.com.

You don't need to be a Patreon. It's not going to be Patreon-only content, but that's the best email address so that we can keep things separate and sane. Exactly. So that's that bit. Let's get on to the next bit, which is the show bit. And this is one we have wanted to cover for a while.

We actually interviewed Ryan White, who made a documentary about this case ages ago in the pandemic times. But even going through it all again to write this episode, I really thought about the news at the time and how wrong all the reporting was and how it was never really corrected. So anyway, here we go. The assassination of King Jong-nam. On the 12th of February 2017, Siti Aisha was in the Hard Rock Cafe in Kuala Lumpur, which is the capital of Malaysia if you have not been to school, and she was celebrating her birthday.

She posted a video of herself blowing out her birthday candles, filmed by a friend. That video was posted on Facebook, and it was also the last post that Siti Aisha ever made into the Zuckerverse. A few days later, Siti was arrested. The police asked her where she had been on the 13th of February, the day after her birthday celebrations. Siti told the police the truth. She'd been in Kuala Lumpur airport with her boss,

who she knew as Mr. Chang. And she was making a video for a Japanese YouTube channel. Siti rang Mr Chang to confirm her story but his phone number was no longer active. Then the Malay police told Siti that she was being arrested for murder. She was dumbfounded. She simply didn't understand how that could possibly be true. Siti had been filming a prank with her boss. Prank comedy is very big in East Asia. There are thousands and thousands of YouTube channels of girls running up to kiss strangers in the street,

people dressed as spiders, scaring old ladies, pretending to be sick on the subway, that sort of thing. Yeah, sort of like slapstick comedy. May have had its day in the West, but in the East it is very much going strong i feel like there was a show here it was called like just for laughs or something but i think it might have been a lot of like european like continental european yeah i think the closest thing i can think of is like you've been framed no i would say that's like america's funniest home videos this is like

just for laughs was literally like people being oh i see i see eating a blood capsule and then like falling out i have no memory falling out of like a portalo or something equally unimaginative but obviously also now we say it's kind of had its day here but probably actually not just maybe not on tv because youtube is also full of people thinking it's really funny to do fucking pranks all the time. Someone's watching it. Someone's watching it. I mean, someone must be, yeah.

Siti was making her life also doing the same. And because she worked in this prankosphere, she perhaps naturally thought that when these two men claiming to be police stood there accusing her of murder, maybe they were in on the game too. Which is not a ridiculous conclusion. No, no. I mean, if your entire life is seen through the lens of prank opportunities,

then I would also maybe think it was a joke. So City took quite some convincing to understand that she wasn't in fact being punked. She really was being arrested for murder. And what's more, she had done it. She just had no idea. Siti Aisha isn't from Kuala Lumpur. She's not even from Malaysia. She's from the neighbouring nation of Indonesia.

She'd grown up extremely poor in a rural and deprived area, so in her teens, Siti moved to Jakarta in search of a better life. She got a job in a clothing factory and ended up marrying the owner. Then she had a baby boy when she was 17. In 2012, Siti got divorced from her factory man and lost her son to the custody battle. Alone all over again, she set off for the much more liberal Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. When she arrived, she liked it. She wasn't required to wear a headscarf, and for the first time in her life,

she realised that she could be pretty. That's not me making a comment on the hijab, those are her words. But KL, like all capital cities, had a darker side. Getting work is hard, and eventually, City became a sex worker. Trafficking is also rife in Kuala Lumpur, despite its shiny, western-looking exterior.

Now, of course, for some sex workers, it's a choice. But for Siti, it was a last resort. Siti, like many other women and girls, would wait outside the bars of the Malaysian capital, waiting for punters. And one night, a taxi driver that she knew, not well, but just from around, stopped and introduced her to a man that he'd picked up from the airport in his cab. This man was North Korean, and he said that his name was James. Which I think we can safely assume, given North Korea's distasteaste for all things west was definitely not his name yeah he's no i'm james he's the opposite of james james backwards would be a more likely name yes exactly yeah so not james told the john the taxi

driver that he was working for a Japanese production company and he was looking for girls to appear in prank videos. John told him that he knew just the place to find girls looking for work and found City wandering alone outside the bars in the city centre. James asked City if she would like to appear in a video shoot and she agreed. They met a few days later

and not James explained that all City needed to do for these Japanese prank videos was to put baby oil on her hands and then go and hold a stranger's hand. So funny. I just think there's like

It's like all of this relatable comedy on YouTube. It's like fucking hell. Yeah, I think when I was watching this Who's watching this? Well, you'd be surprised.

In Korea, even in Seoul, like the cultural, I mean, the real capital and also the cultural capital where everything's supposed to be cutting edge. The only theater that is in Seoul is slapstick shows and mimes. I cannot overstate how huge the audience is for this kind of content. That's so funny.

I mean, we say that but then people fucking sat around here watching mrs brown's boys on primetime bbc people are terrible people have terrible taste yeah just watch father ted like a normal person and city agrees with us she didn't really understand how holding a stranger's hand would make a funny video. But Not James told her that this is exactly what the Japanese comedy market loved. I thought the Japanese comedy market liked throwing octopuses on people's faces and then, I don't know, humiliating them in some sexual way. I mean, it's not far off. Yeah.

And then Not James paid Siti. And she thought that this was the easiest money she had ever made it was a bit tricky though communication wise because not james spoke terrible english and even worse indonesian so he brought in an accomplice called mr chang to communicate more fluently with city and then not james and mr chang shot a few videos of city running up to random people in the street and either holding their hands or covering their eyes from behind in some sort of peekaboo guess who it is type of game. Hysterical.

I still don't know if it's worse than Miranda, though. That show. Do you know what? I have never, ever watched it. Don't. It is. I mean, talking about slapstick, we're talking about how the Asians love slapstick. Miranda is just slapstick.

I wouldn't know. That's on primetime BBC. Yeah, well, to be honest, Miranda Hart in Call the Midwife was enough Miranda Hart for me, so I didn't feel like I needed to follow it. I do not like Miranda Hart. Do not message me and tell me how funny it is. It's not fucking funny.

I can't. Can't cope. Ray of sunshine this morning. I was going to say something else I can't remember. Never mind. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't.

I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding,

and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Meanwhile, 1,739.8 miles away in Hanoi, Vietnam, a very similar set of circumstances was happening to a very different woman. Duan Ti Hong was a young, educated woman living in Hanoi. She went to a private university and studied accounting, but all of her knowledge of tax and bank reconciliations did her no good. Unfortunately,

Duan struggled to get a job in the accountancy field, so she started to waitress in a pub, and occasionally did a bit of modelling and appeared in YouTube videos. Do-Won desperately wanted to be an actress and YouTube seemed like a logical way in. So when a fellow waitress told her about a Japanese production company who needed actresses for YouTube videos, Do-Won was all too keen. She went for a meeting with a man ominously named Mr. Y. Which just sounds, I mean, it sounds like a nerve agent, doesn't it? Yeah. It's not good.

Don't like that. Hannah and I have been to several TV conversations that have not led anywhere. But they have been eye-opening. They've been very interesting when we've had those conversations. But I think the first one we ever went to where we were like, God, it was like when we first started, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. I took the morning off to go to it and then went to my full-time job and you know it didn't really go anywhere it was like for channel five here in the uk which is like

terrestrial but you only get it if it's like not raining and you waggle your antenna just right but my favorite thing about us not getting anything with channel five was after they told us that it wasn't going anywhere i I went on Channel 5's website, like 5OD or whatever the hell it's called. And the top like show that was being advertised was Raffles the World's Biggest Dog. I remember that. And I was like,

so Raffles the World's Biggest Dog got a show from Channel 5. And they were like, we don't really know what to do with the both of you. Thanks though. Thanks for coming in. It was great. So anyway, Duan went and met Mr. Y. And he was North Korean, but spoke very good Vietnamese. He explained that he wanted Duan to act in funny prank videos for YouTube. And he offered her a thousand American dollars for this task. Mr. Y

also told Duan that she would be taken to Japan, to the States, all over the world, and she would be a star. Duan couldn't say yes quick enough. When it came to shooting these videos, just like City all those miles away, Duan was instructed by Mr. Y to put baby oil on her hands, sneak up on people from behind, and cover their eyes. After these filming sessions, Mr. Y would give Duan pretty savage feedback on her performance, telling her that she needed to move with purpose and press her hands more firmly onto her unsuspecting victim's eyes and leave them there for two to three seconds. Otherwise, the comic timing's going to be all off.

Well, that's what he says. The joke's just not going to land. Yeah, yeah, and he completely says that. He, it's you know, you have to get the point across. That's the quote. Otherwise, people might miss the hilarious joke. Yeah, otherwise, it's it's just gonna you're gonna bomb. Duan, you know, obviously wants to keep making that sweet, sweet US money. So she does what she's told. And after a few shoots, including one in Hanoi Airport, Duan's international dream came true. Mr. Y flew her with him to Kuala Lumpur.

I also feel like, I know this is the major setting for much of the rest of this episode, but I do feel like doing pranks in airports, not chill. Of all the places, the least chill. Yes, I think, yes, I think it's very easy to, with Siti and Duan at this stage in the places, the least chill. Yes, I think it's very easy to, with City Undo On at this stage in the game, to be like, well, obviously something was off.

Like, all of this is so off. But I think that you just have to put yourself in. They're in a completely different situation. No, no, no. I don't mean like they should have known. I mean like prank shows. Don't film in airports. No, I mean famously it's incredibly difficult to get permissions to film in airports. So you can't run up to somebody and put baby oil in their eyes, apparently. Well, famously you can't.

Famously you'll get done for murder. Oh yeah, that. So once they arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Mr. Y brought to on a giant teddy bear. There's CCTV footage of her carrying it through the hotel that she stayed in, and it quite literally is as big as she is. Mr. Y told Duan to practice covering the bear's eyes, just like they had in the videos back in Vietnam. He also told her that the next day they would be going to Kuala Lumpur International Airport to film yet another prank, but this time there would be two other actors in on the scheme.

One of them would be a fat bald man, and he was the target who had been specifically hired to make Duan's job extremely difficult. The other was a woman who had the same task as Duan, which we know is to surprise the man from behind, cover his eyes with baby oil and then run away. Duan was specifically told not to let the bald man see her and above all, to act normal. The next morning, Duan arrived at the airport with Mr. Y, and you probably already guessed that Siti Aisha and Mr. Chang were already there. Independently of each other, Siti and Duan were given baby oil to put on their hands and they were directed towards a man who was standing in the forecourt looking at the departure screens. Siti made it to the board man first.

She covered his eyes with her hands from behind and then ran off. Moments later, Duan did the same. All of this was very clearly captured on CCTV. And the absolute best source out there on this whole case is the documentary that we referenced at the start of the episode called Assassins, directed by Ryan White. It really is just a cracking documentary. It's so well done.

Absolutely. And yeah, if you also want to listen to or watch our interview with him the video version of the interview is up on patreon and so you can check that out there and the reason it's so good is because during the making of this documentary assassins ryan and his team trawled through quite literally hours of cctv footage and because it is an international airport everything was caught on camera. Ryan White and his team came to the conclusion during this process that there is only a few seconds of footage that we don't actually have. For the most part like I said the entire surprise attack on the man looking for his flight on the departure board is on film. After the eye

swiping both women quickly made their way to separate toilets to wash their hands. You want to get all that baby oil off, after all. Duan even looks straight into a camera when leaving the airport, which is not exactly the move of somebody who's trying to hide. But why would she be furtive? Why would she avoid CCTV cameras? All she did was play a prank, and surely Mr Mr Y had permission to film in such a public place.

Mr Y told Doan that she'd done a good job. She went back to her hotel with the satisfaction of a job well done. Mr Y told her that she would be doing another shoot at the airport the next morning. So she did as she was told. The next day, Valentine's Day, Do-an went back to the airport and expectantly waited for Mr. Y. She called him multiple times, but not only did he not answer the phone,

his number had been disconnected. And that was because Mr. Y's job was done. And although she didn't know it yet, so was Do-an's. And that's because what Do-an and Siti thought was baby oil wasn't baby oil at all. It was hypertoxic synthetic nerve agent VX. VX is one of a series of nerve agents outlawed internationally under the Chemical Weapons Convention called the V-Series. And because quite literally everything is our fault, the V-series was first developed right here in the UK in the mid-50s. And like all other nerve

agents, it works by blocking the biological function of a very long-winded enzyme that I'm not even going to try and pronounce, so we're just going to call it ACHE. I actually think we did say the full version of it in the Salisbury poisonings episode but we got told off for saying it wrong. ACHE is responsible for breaking down acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that's responsible for the transmission of nerve impulses over synapse gaps. That means that synapses become flooded and the nerve in question becomes permanently switched on. So a muscle for example will be constantly given the message to contract. And so if this happens to a ribcage muscle and it's told to constantly contract, the body loses the ability to expel air from the lungs. So usually nerve agent victims die

from asphyxiation. VX is particularly nasty because it's odourless and tasteless. And just 10 milligrams is enough to kill a person. It's not a great way to go, being literally unable to get air out of your lungs. Yeah. Sounds like the worst. And the baby oil wasn't the only thing that was not as it seemed. The man that Siti and Doohan had smeared VX all over wasn't an actor. He was the half-brother of totalitarian North Korean dictator and the butt of haircut jokes around the world, Kim Jong-un. And the bald man's name was Kim Jong-nam. And Kim Jong-nam was dead. After the totally clueless City and Doohan ran off to wash their hands, Kim Jong-nam went straight

up to the police at Kuala Lumpur airport. By the time he got to them, he had already started to limp. He can be seen on CCTV clearly gesturing to his face, explaining what had just happened. He was given medical attention, but it was no use. Even though he had a vial of VX antidote on his person when he died on the 13th of February 2017, he was gone. And you might be thinking that's quite a specific thing to have on your person, but he had a vial of VX antidote on him because Kim Jong-nam knew that he was under threat. This was not his first assassination attempt rodeo. It was just the one that worked. Now, you probably know, listeners,

who Kim Jong-un is. And if you know who Kim Jong-nam is, well, then you get 10 points for geopolitical awareness. Now, you might be thinking, Jesus Christ, how are you even going to spin this narrative? Obviously, Kim Jong-un killed his half-brother. Where's the suspense? Obviously, Kim Jong-un is completely mental, and that's why he did it.

But you couldn't be more wrong. If you don't know who Kim Jong-nam is, don't worry. Let's start there, because we're going to explain all that to you. You're about to find out. Because we're going to take you through a journey through time and space to explain why the Korean Peninsula is split up into North and South. Now, the written version of the Korean language, Hangul, only came into being in 1443, which may seem a little bit late. Before that, and for 500 years later amongst the elite,

Chinese characters were actually used to denote the spoken word in Korea. And that's because Korea as a nation has spent more time occupied than not. Hangul is famously a very easy language to learn to read because it was invented rather than developed. I see. Foreigners in Korea, you've got no excuse to not learn to read. I didn't, but that's because I'm a piece of shit. This might sound out of the blue, but we do promise it's all relevant. So while we've lulled you into a false-ish sense of security, let's jump forward a few hundred years to 1894 and the first Sino-Japanese war, which was all about whether the Japanese or the Chinese got to be in charge of Korea. Korea is a peninsula, which is obviously a sticky out bit, and sticky out bit means ports, which are very handy for trade and world domination, etc.

Korea is also super resource rich, so it has always been quite literally hot property. The Chinese and the Japanese fought for influence over Korea for ages, and eventually, in 1895, the Japanese won. In the late 1800s, Japan was making major empire-building moves, and Russia was watching. Russia was almost, rule but on it, the largest territorial power in the world. But they had a problem. They had to retire their big old port in Vladivostok every winter because it got too damn cold.

So the Russians were in the market for a port they could control in warmer climes. The Japanese saw what was happening and they were like, no way, Jose. How about Manchuria instead? You don't want nasty Korea. It's so bony and not nutritious. But Russia weren't having any of it. And that meant one thing. War. It was a war that the Japanese won in the end, but it certainly fanned the Pacific theatre flames of World War I, and that's why some historians call it World War Zero. Now, we need to skip ahead again to the end of World War II, which brought Japan to its knees, and the nation was forced to surrender all of its territories, including Korea. The Soviets wasted no time in invading the peninsula. They had boots on the ground the same day that the Japanese left. Now we have to remind ourselves that at this point, the USA and the USSR

were big buddies. Best friends. Oh yes. That's why basically everything that Stalin did, we were just like, ah, shh, because they were on our side at the Nuremberg trials. So the USSR and the USA, pals they may have been, but the US weren't about to let their friends take the whole of the very, very useful Korean peninsula. And also, after Pearl Harbor, they weren't about to do the Japanese any favours either. Yeah, it's kind of like the US at this point are obviously victorious at the end of World War II, chopping up the globe and handing it out to people.

And the USSR for the United States is the lesser of two evils at this point because of Japan. Yeah, they're like the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but not that good friends that you can have Korea. So at that time in history, the US and the USSR had a common goal. That's what kept them together. And that was to keep China out. Yeah, neither of them have ever been friends with China. No. Arguably, things are very different now.

But we're talking about the pasto time still. So that was beneficial for both of them, working towards this common goal of keeping China out. And so the Korean peninsula was partitioned. Completely arbitrarily, mind you, along the 38th parallel. Which, again, if you know anything about how basically most countries came into being, something like this went down. Why are we going to stop partitioning shit? Like, when has it ever gone well?

We'll never stop. I mean, I don't want to make some doom and gloom predictions about Ukraine, but Russia's like, why don't you just partition it? Why don't we do that? And then we'll definitely back off. Don't trust them. So this partition geographically seemed fair because it was sort of along the middle point. But population wise, this partition was wildly not fair. The South had double the number of people, and not even half of the industry that the North did. So now the Soviet Union got what they wanted.

They had control over some of Korea, but they really had no idea what to do with it. They had so little idea that they didn't even bring any Korean speakers with them on their invasion. Only Japanese speakers. Which, considering the history of the nation, was a little bit insensitive. It's outrageous.

It really is quite something. And I feel like everyone forgets that the super explosion of the South Korean economy is so recent. For the longest time, North Korea was ahead in GDP, ahead in life expectancy, all of it. So the way we see North Korea now is very different to when it first appeared. So because the Soviets had shown up without a single person that could speak Korean, they needed one. They needed a Korean, preferably from Pyongyang, which was the obvious city hub north of the partition. And that is where Kim Il-sung comes in. North Korean folklore now tells

the story that Kim was born in a log cabin on Mount Paektu, which is the spiritual home of all Koreans. In actuality, he was achingly normal. But the mythical log cabin in which he was born was built later for North Koreans to pilgrim to, presumably out of plastic. Kim Il-sung, and there are a lot of Kims today, so we're going to have to use full names, I'm afraid. So Kim is the family name, the Il-sung or Jong-nam bit, that is your personal name. So Kim Il-sung, the first Kim that we're dealing with today, perhaps in some sort of prophetic way, was born on the day that the Titanic sank, the 15th of April, 1912.

And the carefully constructed myths around his childhood claim that he was the son of poor farmers. But that just isn't true. Just like it wasn't true for his communist comrade, Chairman Mao. Exactly like Mao, Kim Il-sung was about as middle class as it got in pre-partition Korea. He had a modern education, his father was a teacher and a herbal healer, with an above-average income, honestly. Not quite as good a story though, is it? No, it's not. So in his 20s, Kim Il-sung and his family moved to the northeast of China,

where he finished his education and joined the Soviet guerrilla forces, fighting for control of Manchuria against the Japanese. Kim Il-sung was a card-carrying member of the CCP for 10 years. So he was certainly a communist. Yeah, there seems to be this idea that he was just sort of some like warrior lord opportunist, but nah, like he was communist to the bone. But we should pause here to establish that East Asian communism is a different beast to the Marxism we may be familiar with here in the West. It isn't really about idealism or fairness or the idea of all men being created equal. It isn't even about eating the rich or culling elites. East Asian

communism was all about getting the colonising West out and operating on a different system so that they could no longer be controlled. The Great Leap Forward should have been called The Great Leap Away from the West. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart.

But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite.

Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle.

And in 1985, they announce they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. So local boy Kim Il-sung was instilled as a Soviet puppet to run the satellite state of North Korea and to head up the Korean Communist Project. He was a diehard Stalinist and an even harder nationalist. His Stalinism was reflected in camps, which are still used as a penal system

in North Korea. And he completely copies that from the USSR because before Korea had its own penal system, anyone who he didn't like got sent to Siberia, to the gulags up there. And also Stalin himself edited the North Korean constitution. So Stalin's very involved in the establishment of North Korea. And then the Cold War happened and the USSR and the USA were famously no longer friends. And after Stalin died and Stalinism started to fall apart in his wake, Kim Il-sung cared less and less about what Moscow told him to do. He didn't care for the new softer socialism emerging in the Soviet bloc. He much preferred the starving your people to death tactics that had come before. But no matter how soft he thought the post-Stalinists were,

he still relied on them for quite a lot of aid. So Kim Il-sung did have to do what he was told by Moscow to a certain extent. But on the flip side of that, he was kind of given free reign because the Kremlin didn't really know what to do with their bit of Korea. But they sure as fuck weren't going to let America have it. Yeah, they were like, we're just not going to let America have it, and it's got to be won for team communism. They're like, I'm sure we can do some sort of port situation in North Korea.

North Korea, by the way, is fucking freezing. Those poor Russians, they just can't get their hands on a warm water port. I mean, it's boiling in summer, but in winter it's not going to help you out at all. It's like seven feet of snow in winter. So when Kim Il-sung told Moscow that he was invading south korea and instilling a communist regime across the whole nation because even now north korea is still considered to be one nation divided into two separate sections and he told them that it would be easy peasy lemon squeezy and moscow gave him their full support. Yeah, they were like, well, you know Korean stuff.

So if you say, if you say that it's going to be fine. It's not like there were no communism supporters in South Korea, because especially because their economy was in the shitter for so long. And like there definitely was an undercurrent in Seoul specifically of this sort of like, you know revolution coffee house scheming like that was happening just not as much as kim il-sung thought it was so he overshot here and in his overshooting on the 25th of june 1950 the korean war began with the north invading the much poorer and less industrialized south and it turned out rather easy-peasy lemon squeezy,

to be difficult, difficult, lemon difficult. The US swooped in to of course protect the South and their capitalist sphere of influence, and then China came in to back up their comrades, and the whole thing ground to a pretty terrible stalemate. Two million people died between both sides, and a ceasefire was agreed on the 27th of July, 1953. And that was followed by the longest armistice in history.

Fact, the Korean War didn't officially end. Ever. Yep, still happening right now. I must have told this story before, but when I was in South Korea, I lived in Changwon, which was the Milton Keynes of South Korea, because it was specifically built as a second capital just in case Seoul is invaded by the North. I don't think many people understand just how close Seoul is to the demilitarized zone, like it is next door. But I was in Changwon all the way down South, and there was bunkers underneath the city. So in theory, the whole city could move underground. And I was sat in the

teacher's room one day, and this like alarm goes off and I thought it was a fire alarm but it was a the North Korea is coming alarm which is national and it happens every six months and you're supposed to treat it like an earthquake so you're supposed to like get all the kids under desks and stuff but they all just ignore it like a communist klaxon yeah yeah yeah it's like oh North Korea's coming I know but like because everyone I mean my experience I can talk about my experience, but like my experience of the Koreans that I knew out there, when your country has been at war your whole life, and literally nothing has ever happened, it's very difficult to take it seriously. So it felt like it was a joke. and obviously the last couple of days korea's obviously been like hey look we're we're gonna bomb stuff again north korea's like hey look missiles we're doing missile testing yeah but they've done that so many times they just do it for aid every time north korea needs aid they do a missile scare they do a new they do a secret not secret they do a very public nuclear test

public missile tests and then the west is like oh okay it's that time of the year again. Here's some aid. And they're like, okay, thanks. Yeah. I mean, North Korea is very difficult because you never know, because no one's allowed in, you never know what is coming out, whether it's true, whether it's propaganda, whether it's a bit of both. So I'm always very wary of people being like, North Korea definitely does this. I'm like, you don't fucking know. But I think what is important is the attitude is like, oh, well, like their bombs don't even work. They can only fly for five seconds. You only need five seconds to hit Seoul. That's literally all they need. So technically speaking, the Korean War has never ended. It is still going as we are recording this in our bunker in East London. However, both the North and the South agreed in 2021 to end the war in principle,

but that doesn't actually change anything. No one's coming any closer to any sort of agreement. And the damage has very much been done. The DMZ, the demilitarized zone between the North and the South is the most militarized zone on the planet. And I've been there and no Koreans are allowed on the border for a start, it's all Americans. And you have to watch this very weird film about how it's a nature sanctuary, which it's not. No way. Yeah, I did see a North Korean though. Yeah, I mean, you're right there. Like you can see the guards and stuff.

So I think if you are in Korea, it's a bizarre thing and you should go and see it if you're there. Obviously, don't go to North Korea. Don don't give them your money so armistice the armistice begins kim il-sung is making big moves as stalinism crumbled in the east he managed to maintain a fossil of stalinist nationalism within north korea that has managed to withstand foreign influence to this day and the north korean economy has appeared to be on the brink of collapse for decades, but it never has. And it hasn't succumbed to market reforms like Russia or China either. Even today, the life expectancy in North Korea is 69, which is astonishingly high for such an impoverished country. And North Korea has managed this with orthodox Stalinism. For example,

everyone over the age of 16 in North Korea is required to wear a pin of Kim Il-sung whenever they leave the house. He's considered their eternal president. And all of the things I just said probably made me sound like a bit of a North Korea stan. I'm not. I think I'm going to say no. No, I'm not. The point I'm making is it is not as chaotic as some people make it out to be. Okay. Do we know, though, that the life expectancy is 69 or is that what they say it is? I mean, potato, tomato. I think, how do you really know anything?

What is truth? No. Who are you? Well, yeah, I don't know. I don't believe them. I don't believe them that people are living till 69, but that's my, because I feel they have to say that they have to say things are fine here things are absolutely fine and like maybe in like Pyongyang

like where people are allowed to do their fucking like little show on the road tourism of North Korea but I feel like I'm not entirely surprised if people outside of Pyongyang especially people who don't work for the government obviously are just dying at like 39 with no teeth. And it's just fucking awful. But I don't want to go there because I don't want to give them my money, like Hannah said. So we'll never know. And I'll keep it that way. So back to Kim Il-sung. Like Hannah said, if you leave the house, you have to wear a little pin with his face on it because he was the eternal president. But he obviously wasn't eternal. So just like the rest of us, he had to anoint a successor. But he had seen what happened to Lenin and Trotsky and Stalin, and he was not about to make the same mistake. He named his son Kim Jong-il as his successor. And as such, the world's first communist monarchy was born this is always the challenge for the communist

dictator because who are you going to name your successor the minute you do it they're going to fucking murder you yeah exactly and that's putin's big problem now is like you know he's he's no spring chicken no famously not no no matter how many ice cold baths he takes with bears well i mean maybe we should try it. I feel like I'm rapidly aging. Maybe we need to start doing some... Adrenochrome. Adrenochrome.

Do you think we're famous enough to be letting on the adrenochrome yet? Probably not. You'll know we are because we'll start to look better in our videos and we'll also stop making jokes about adrenochrome. Yeah. Let's just go and stand at a crossroads

and wait for the devil to show up and see what we can do. I'll make a fucking deal with the devil. What can I have? Yeah, let's just go and stand at a crossroads and wait for the devil to show up and see what we can do. I'll make a fucking deal with the devil. What can I have? Excellent, let's do it. But yeah, I think this is the problem. As soon as you make any fingers pointing in the direction of a successor, you're getting killed.

That's it. So yeah, communist monarchy. That's the way that Kim Il-sung decided he was going to navigate that particular problem. Jong-il took the reins in 1991. So this is the son. And if you're familiar with the history of communism, you will know that this particular time in history proved to be a particularly tricky one.

Yeah, kind of the worst time to be a communist, really, 91. Dada! And in earnest, the Kim dynasty found themselves in a bit of trouble. They relied hugely on aid from the USSR. And now that the USSR had nothing to give because they didn't exist anymore, things were looking pretty bad. There was no more fuel from Russia, which meant no farming machines, which meant no farming, which in turn meant no farmers and no food. And so,

of course, there was an enormous famine that lasted well into the 1990s. And we have absolutely no idea how many people actually died. During the famine, the retail market totally disappeared and it was replaced by state handouts that are still going on now. North Korea kept expecting a Viet Cong-style uprising against the American influence in the South, but it never came. Actually, kind of the opposite happened. Instead of communists riding into the sunset for their fellow man, capitalism made a guest appearance in the North Korean economic jungle in the shape of the black market. The black market is so ubiquitous in North Korea that it's called the grey market. Essentially, people started to do what they always do, what they needed to, to survive. Between 1998 and 2008, private industry,

aka black market trading, made up 78% of the North Korean GDP. But still, the nation did not collapse. As time went by, Kim Jong-il, just like his father, needed to establish a successor. And he had the luxury of choice. His firstborn son, and therefore the obvious option, was Kim Jong-nam. But you already know that that didn't happen. And that was because of Kim Jong-un's mum being extremely persuasive. Jong-nam got kicked out of the running, and Kim Jong-un was named as the next ruler of the North Korean regime in 2010. So they got different mums?

Yes. Ah, I see. It's all very Roman, isn't it? It's extremely Roman. And Kim Jong-nam is 10 years older than Kim Jong-un. So there is a big gap. And they also grow up completely separately. They're not like having sleepovers or whatever. So it's extremely Roman. And Kim Jong-un eventually took over when Kim Jong-il died in December 2011. And typically, nobody really knows that much about his death. I think the official report is a heart attack, but we don't know.

So these two brothers, although like Hannah said, they did grow up totally separately, they were both educated abroad in Switzerland. And when he took over in 2011, Kim Jong-un was just 25 years old. And no one thought that he would survive. He was too young, Egyptian boy king, too soft, and not totalitarian enough. But did he prove them all wrong? And Jong-nam has never seemed that bothered about being zumped by his little brother. So in a slightly un-Romanesque turn, he decided that he didn't really want it anyway. Yeah, he doesn't care.

Yeah, he's fine. He's fine. I mean, he's not. He's not fine. He's not fine now. No, but he was fine. So at the time of his death, Jong-nam had actually lived in China for a decade with his family, most of the time just keeping his head down, but occasionally making criticisms of the North Korean regime. Probably don't do that. Whenever he does it,

though, like there's a lot of film clips of people asking him about it. And he seems very chill, like he doesn't seem worried for his life. But obviously, he was worried enough for his life to be carrying a VX antidote with him. This is true. Very, very, very complex man. And Jong-nam's primary gripe with North Korea was interestingly actually the idea that a monarchy is not socialism, which is, yes, critical, but it also means that he doesn't want to be king either because he's saying he's anti the monarchy, so he doesn't want to be the fucking king of socialism. Yeah, exactly. I think everyone was sort of expecting his criticism of the regime to be like, well, it should have been me, I'm the firstborn, blah, blah.

But he's like, no, it shouldn't be a monarch at all. Yeah. So why is he a threat that needs taking out? Well, lots of reasons. And some of them are pretty logical. Not the ramblings of a madman that we'd all prefer to see Kim Jong-un as. At the very beginning of the 2000s, Kim Jong-nam took his family to Tokyo

and even worse, he took his kids to Disneyland. Oh no. And obviously considering North Korea is a sworn enemy of capitalism, and that's why they're clearly doing so well, and of course of America, it doesn't get more American and more capitalist than Disneyland. And it was all a bit of a PR nightmare. I mean, if you're the king of communism and then your brother takes his kids to Disneyland, it's a bit of a kick in the dick. It's yeah, it's really kind of as bad as it gets.

And after the Tokyo incident, Kim Jong-nam moved to China. There are those who think that Kim Jong-un's mum, with all of her influence, was the one to tip off the Japanese authorities that they had a North Korean prince in their midst. North Korean agrippina over there. I wouldn't put it past her, to be honest. So it was a disgrace, sure. But is that enough to warrant an assassination? Maybe, maybe not. There are a few other reasons that Kim Jong-nam may have been in the North Korean monarch's crosshairs. Firstly, he lived in the northeast of China with two million other Koreans. And China have ever since the 17th century had their eye on Korea, just like the Japanese and the Russians have too. It's a very useful peninsula to have control over. And so it's not beyond the realm of

imagination that China were keeping Kim Jong-nam as a backup, just in case they needed to install a puppet in Pyongyang. And with USSR and their aid out of the picture, China doesn't have leverage over North Korea. It has a hammer. China can literally make north korea not exist overnight kim jong-nam though has shown little interest in being china's puppet man saying publicly that all he wants is to just live his life because he's he's lived in the west he speaks five languages he's seen the other side of the coin and he's like this is way better yeah than having human shit as fertilizer, which is why they have such a problem with... Death. No.

I'm a little bug and I'm in your... Parasite. Yes. Brain function, slow. I would love to watch a North Korean version of Monsters Inside Me. Oh, yeah. I bet, yeah, I think there'll be lots of monsters inside lots of people. Let's pitch it.

Let's pitch it and maybe we'll get... We'll finally get our TV show Hannah next to Raffles, the world's biggest dog. He'll be monsters inside me, colon, North Korea, in your colon. So actually, Kim Jong-nam, we know that he's not interested in being China's puppet and we know that he knew he was under threat

and we know that there had been many assassination attempts before the one that worked because he wrote several letters to his half-brother saying, please stop trying to kill me. Oh dear. But maybe he wasn't keeping his head down as much as he said he was. Yeah, that's very much his public face.

There may be another side of the story. Yes. Because on the 8th of February 2017, Kim Jong-nam flew to Malaysia where he spent two hours in a hotel room with a man now believed to be a CIA agent. Then he left and flew to Kuala Lumpur, and just a few days later, he was dead. It was discovered by Malay police that Jong-nam had moved a lot of data from his laptop onto a USB drive the day that he met the alleged CIA agent in Langkawi,

Malaysia. Suspect. Doesn't look great. No, makes you look really fucking guilty. But also, depends whose side you're on, the North Koreans are going to think he's guilty. The Americans are going to be like, thanks, buddy. Oh, yeah. But the Americans being like, thanks, buddy, wink, wink, is going to make him look even more fucking guilty yes true so kim jong-nam also had 138 000 us dollars in cash in a bag how big a fucking bag do you need for that much money don't know both lots it's a big bag so it would appear from just these little fact debts that maybe kim jong-nam had possibly exchanged some information for money. Delicious money.

Lovely capitalist money. Yeah. I mean, you've got to have the big bucks if you're going to Disneyland. Those kids are going to want fucking hats and ice creams and t-shirts. Mickey Mouse pretzels. Pictures of them on rides where their faces are all blurry

and what's the point? You've got to have the money. You need to blur those kids' faces. Public enemy number one. But like all other instances of international espionage, we actually know less than zero about the CIA meeting. It just seems a bit convenient for me. I know what you mean, but at the same time, I'm kind of like, really, then what triggered this assassination? Because if we're saying he's not crazy,

which I agree that I don't think Kim Jong-un is crazy. What triggered this? Especially doing it in an international country. Doing it in an international country. And killing your brother, drawing a lot of attention to yourself that way. What was the trigger? Like when we did the Russian assassinations with Alexander Litvinenko, he'd been yelling about Putin for years, decades. But it was after he wrote that book that they were like, okay, get him. Yeah, I think I agree to a certain extent. I think for reasons we will go on to discuss, I kind of don't think they need more of a reason than to prove that they can. Yeah, that can also be very, very true.

Again, very similar with the Russian case that we looked at. So we have no way of knowing what's actually true, if he did have a CIA meeting, what was going on. But it is possible that Kim Jong-nam was a CIA informant selling information on North Korea to the Americans. It is possible. Of course it's possible. Perhaps it's even probable. The only thing I guess I would

say is, would he take such a risk? And B, if he was willing to take such a risk, what information did he have since he was kind of living in exile? And this is it. I'm like, he's the prince of North Korea. He's not going to be strapped for $138,000. Like it's not that much money. It's not life changing money for someone who's quite literally in a royal family that doesn't seem to make that i mean obviously we don't know that much about it maybe it was an installment and also why would someone who has so much heat on them agree to carry that much cash you know there's a lot of things that don't seem to work out but actually there is another reason that kim Jong-un would want to take out

his half-brother, simply to prove that he could. And that's because when Kim Jong-un ascended to supreme power in North Korea, he was shrouded in doubt. But he proved to everyone that he was tough enough. By killing loads of people, just like Stalin would have done, Kim Jong-un purged the old guard out of his government, including sending his own uncle to the hangman. And that was the whole first phase of his leadership. Keep killing until they're all too scared to question you. Once he had taken out his rivals and proved himself to be a man of Stalinist steel,

he moved on to phase two, which was to look like a statesman and get the attention of the world. And he has done that. States like North Korea don't survive with madmen at the helm. They survive with leaders who know what they are doing. And Kim Jong-un, despite appearances, knows exactly what he's doing. He's even shaken hands with the President of the United States of America, a feat never achieved by his father or his grandfather.

So now we know a bit more about North Korea, let's get back to the North Koreans in today's story. There were eight North Korean men in KL Airport the day that Kim Jong-nam was killed with VX. And just after the attack, they all changed their clothes and were rushed through diplomatic security channels by employees of North Korea's only airline. The men made it back to North Korea, carefully avoiding any countries that may arrest them. They changed in Jakarta,

Dubai, and Vladivostok, and then landed in Pyongyang, unscathed. Because obviously, perhaps not obviously, they do this sort of roundabout route because there are actually very few countries that will fly you to North Korea. There are very few airlines that will cross that border. Russia and China are basically it. Yeah. So obviously these guys had escaped, but Kim Jong-nam was still dead. So someone had to take the fall. And of course, our prank princesses, Do-an and Siti, were left behind. And so was another member of the operation. His name was Ri Jong-chul.

He was a chemist who just so happened to have his rent paid by the North Korean embassy. The North Korean embassy in London is like a residential house in like Ealing or somewhere. So very little actually happened to Ri Jong. He was arrested and his home and secret lab was searched. But what they found there, we don't really know. The Malaysian government have never seemed that interested in getting to the bottom of how a nerve agent like VX managed to kill someone in their airport in broad daylight. So let's get back to our ladies. We know that Do-an went back to the airport, but of course, Mr. Y was back in North Korea. After waiting for him for a while, Do-an was arrested by police. She, like Siti, had no idea

what was going on. But of course, the death of Kim Jong-nam was international news i remember watching the news about this happening and sort of half knowing who kim jong-un was i remember watching the news and i remember a lot of the reports being like oh there was a cloth like his face was wiped with a cloth and like that doesn't happen but i remember very clearly that being on the news at the time and then it all just sort of disappears it's not reported on anymore similarly at the time. And then it all just sort of disappears. It's not reported on anymore, similarly to the Russian poisoning. In the midst of the global uproar, Malaysia expelled the North Korean ambassador and stopped all North Korean nationals from leaving the country. There was never any illusion that North Korea was not involved in the murder of Kim Jong-nam. But a swap happened. North Korea traded Malaysians that they were holding for the chemist and Kim Jong-nam's body.

And both of them were sent back to North Korea, which of course means we can't have a closer look at what's going on with Kim Jong-nam's body. They've definitely burned him. There are two things that we need to know about Malaysia to make this all make sense. One, they are one of the few countries that have a good working trade relationship with North Korea. And two, most of their press is state-run, so it can be very tricky to get the whole picture. So they are exporting stuff to North Korea? Yep. Interesting. And it does seem fairly obvious that the relationship

with Pyongyang was more important to the Malaysian government than getting justice for the murder of Kim Jong-nam. So Duan and Siti were imprisoned in neighbouring cells in Kajang prison for over a year before they went to trial. They couldn't see each other, but they could hear each other, and the two women formed a close bond, despite having no common language. Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to be in a prison in Malaysia,

and you can't speak to anyone. You have no idea what's happened. Siti doesn't even know who Kim Jong-nam is until years later. She has no idea. Yeah. No, being banged up abroad is probably the worst thing I can imagine. So they were both charged with murder. And in Malaysia, that is an automatic death penalty.

Those found guilty of murder are attached to a sandbag and hanged by the neck so that their spine snaps instantly. The Malaysian justice system is a funny old thing because obviously the British have fucked Malaysia up for ages. So the barristers look like they would here. But it doesn't quite work the way it works over here so in Malaysia the prosecution present their case and then the judge decides whether the defense get to present their case to the defense get their turn if the judge thinks

that the argument from the prosecution is convincing enough for a conviction so unless the judge thinks you did it you don't get a defense argument that's fucked up so yeah they were like nah thanks british we'll take some bits like the costume we'll take the wigs yeah and then we'll make a justice system that is really fucking terrible so you're never going to get convicted just on the prosecution's argument that's when you're that's when you're acquitted is if the judge goes over the prosecution's argument is like no this is bullshit okay so it's still bad but it's not it's not as but you're never going to get convicted just on the prosecution's argument anyway at trial the prosecution

argued that doan and city knew exactly what they were doing that they were cold-blooded assassins and they based that argument on the fact that both women washed their hands straight after wiping the VX on Kim Jong-nam's eyes. I would have said that it would be much more likely if they were not touching it with their bare hands. Fucking hell, they washed their hands. They washed all that nerve agent off their hands. Exactly.

And you can see them in CCTV and they're being careful not to touch banisters or like their handbags or whatever, but come. More amazingly there was almost no mention of the women's North Korean handlers who were of course safe under the wing of Pyongyang and not on trial. Actually the court refused to name these people at trial and Kim Jong-nam was referred to by a fake name Kim Chol and the defense objected to this, quite rightly, and said that the prosecution had a legal duty to disclose all of the names of the North Korean men

involved in the murder, but their objection was overruled. They're like, no, we don't need the names of these men who aren't here. Okay. So the prosecution closed their case on the 5th of April 2018, and the judge ruled that the women could be guilty, and therefore the defense would present their case. And in the ruled that the women could be guilty and therefore the defense would present their case. And in the gap before the defense would start, the women were sent back

to prison. The defense's argument was simple. They said that the women had no idea what they were doing. Neither of them had got rid of the clothes that they were wearing the day they killed Kim Jong-nam, for example. If they knew that their clothes were covered in VX, why would they take that risk? Do-an can even be seen rubbing her hands together in CCTV footage. Why would she do that if she knew it was VX? It could have killed her. And if you're wondering how these women survived prolonged exposure to the nerve agent that took less than half an hour to kill a fully grown man? Well, the answer is all to do with skin. The skin on your hands is thick and fatty and much harder for VX to penetrate. As long as you wash it off within 15 minutes, the chances are that you'll be totally fine.

Eyes, on the other hand, and the skin surrounding them is much thinner. And here VX can get into the body, no problem. On the 11th of March 2019, Duan was scheduled to take the stand and tell the court her version of events, but she never got the chance. There was a big announcement to be made. The prosecutor, seemingly out of nowhere, announced that they would be withdrawing all charges against Siti Ayesha and that she was free to go. Siti looked visibly shaken as she left the courthouse and headed for home. Doan, for the first time in over two years, was completely alone. Court was adjourned, Siti set off back to Jakarta,

and Doan was escorted back to her prison cell in a bulletproof vest. So here's what happened. The Indonesian government had pulled a solid for Siti. They had been putting constant pressure on the Malay government to let the obviously innocent woman go, and it had worked. The Vietnamese government did not extend the same favour to Doan because, guess what, Vietnam and North Korea have close relations as socialist countries. There is a lot of North Korean trade activity in Vietnam.

So Doan was not let off. But she was given a way out. The prosecution offered her the much lesser charge of causing harm, and she was allowed to go back to Hanoi. The two women live semi-normal lives now, cities back in rural Indonesia, and Doan is still trying to act in Hanoi, but she is suffering through a string of abuse on social media it's a lot of people being like well you're still a murderer watch the documentary because it's amazingly well done but what you really get a sense of is how naive these women were and i'm not saying that they're at fault at all but like do on when she's also do on's english is great and when she's being questioned because

obviously she's in malaysia blah blah she is being questioned in english and she does the whole thing in english like and it doesn't really seem to faze her at all which is just like i can't imagine being questioned for murder and not my first language but when at the end when she's back in hanoi she's like you know i used to think that i'm not going to say exactly what she says because it's just going to sound like i'm making fun of the way she speaks English, but she essentially says, I used to have rose tinted glasses and now I see the world for what it really is. Yeah. So where are we now? Well, absolutely no justice has been done. Malaysia knew a hundred percent that this was a political assassination on their soil and they have just let it happen. And it would be very easy to be critical of that.

But we in Britain have done exactly the same thing on multiple occasions when the Russians have come here and poisoned people. Kim Jong-un is still given a red carpet welcome in Malaysia whenever he goes. And relations between Malaysia and North Korea continue to be good. And this is a classic example of what people are calling North Korean exceptionalism. And it's not even the first time that North Korea have conducted active international terrorism. They tried to kill the South Korean president in 1983, but actually killed 21 Burmese people instead. And in 1987, they killed 115 people aboard a Korean air flight. And no one did anything about it. North Korea is not mad. It's not irrational.

It can't be because it keeps surviving. What it is is a Stalinist time capsule, a living political fossil. It keeps looking like it's going to collapse, but it doesn't. What is so extraordinary is that North Korea is entirely dependent on aid from China since the fall of the USSR. It quite literally could not survive without China, but no one fancies taking China on either. Kim Jong-un may be the best wielder of Machiavellian policies the world has ever seen. He has shown the world that he can act with total impunity and get away with it. So literally,

what is to stop him doing it again? It's absolutely astounding that this happened in the 2000s. Yeah, yeah, no, totally, totally. I feel like if you've listened to our interview, if you've watched the documentary Assassins, you'll know. But like we said at the start, there's a lot of misinformation out there about this case, and possibly not a lot of clarity. So hopefully this does something. Yeah, clarity is never a word that leaps to mind when you talk about North Korea. But I will say in the Assassin's documentary, there's a Washington Post reporter who's been reporting on North Korea for decades. And she is amazing. And she's just like, bish, bash, bosh, this is what it is.

So that's it, guys. A little stroll on over to North Korea. If you feel like that's just not enough geopolitics for me today. I don't know, come hang out with us on Under the Duvet immediately after this, where we will no doubt probably be talking about Ukraine and other horrible things that are happening around the world, and maybe also in our lives. Who knows, we'll mix it up. So come check that out. And if you're like, I want some extra content, maybe some in the news, which is of course our topical true crime in the headlines, bit of content that we do, or a whole load of bonus episodes then you can head on over to patreon.com slash red handed sign up there download the rss feed and then listen

wherever the hell you want exactly and if that still isn't enough you can go over to spotify for our spotify exclusive show on cults called sinister societies and with that we've got some thank yous from our lovely patrons over at patreon.com forward slash red-handed. And this week we have... Maya Kading, Erica Walters, Corey Owens, Simone Kupitz, Natasha Riedel, Cam Davies, Alice Chloe Hutchins, Paul... It's such an English name and it still completely stumped me. Brawhal? Brawhal? Brawhal?

Seymour Butts. Nice. Ollie, Priscilla S, Dana Donaldson, Samantha Brown, Horse Girl Shelby, Nikki Davison, Rhonda Relaford, Jodie Baker, Heather Ritchie, Marion, Ashley Swan, Robin Harris, Laura Bruck, Somayla Neville, Adeline Bating, Kira Lampkin, Rachel Keller, Anne Coival-Holmer, Emma Glynn, Lindsay Shoeley, Hedge Smedholand, Rosemary Cosgrove, Erin Connell, Sue Aitken, Jack Withersee,

Laura Bale, Joanna O'Connor, Kimberly Phillips, Alicia Fogdall, Joanna T, Amy Sherwood, Chloe Lang, Julie Campbell,

Dr. Robin Bellamaric, Courtney Cox, Carissa B, Bajani Inger Sigurdsdottir, Valda Taipari, Lindsay Davis, Mika van der Tat, Heather Wilcox, Nikki High, Taylor Anderson, Sarah or Sarah Boom, Laura Margo Week, Victoria Caruso, Camille Whitham, Kate with a C and an AIT, GL Anderson, Madam Tashi, Imogen, Sarah Dixon, Helena Nozovsky, Hannah Flade, Natasha Barron, Kaz Hopkins, Cynthia Lloyd, Bee Spitfire, Alyssa McCargue, Molly Simpkin, Lauren Skagora, Amanda Tartalogio, Brittany Young, Julie Morris, Lizzie Benita McKenzie, Stephanie Szyplinski-Sotorius, How do I say this one again? Dems? God knows. Lucy Rushton, Becky Ford, Jess Robson, Namila Mumtaz, how do I say this one again? Kiefer.

Kiefer Britton, Tessa, Michelle Daly, Lisa Fote, Elizabeth Lewis, Heather Blood, Lauren Broadhurst, Heather Schofield,

Joey Brown, Dan, Carolyn, Megan Davis, Jude Morrissey, Lauren Jones, and Tracy Gillespie. Well done. That was a real stint. That was a lot, guys.

Thank you ever so much for supporting the show. We love you extremely very much a lot and we will see you next time or on one of the other things that we do. Goodbye. Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.

He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real.

Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery+.